Every week I get together with a group of close friends and we spend an hour visiting and support each other. They are my tribe, no doubt. I call it, “the best club ever”. One day last week, as I was sitting there and listening as we went around the room, and something struck me: everyone in that room and everyone who wasn’t are all trying to do one thing everyday whether we realize it or not – we’re all trying to find a sense of peace as we understand it.
A sense of peace as we understand it really is one of the best prizes of a life well lived. As I look at the world from my window to it, I see every day how this pursuit is a failed mission for so many, even those of us with the best of intentions. How do I know this? Mostly because I listen to understand and not to respond. And when I listen to understand, I hear a lot of white noise. Mostly people bitching…about their boss, about their person, about their parent, about their child, their friends, their whatever…bitch, bitch, bitch. And sometimes that becomes blame, blame, blame. And of course there’s victim, victim, victim. Sure, there’s the occasional hoorhah or whoopee, but those are the exception and not the rule.
The other thing I’ve noticed in the past 10 years is the number of people who self-medicate in the pursuit of peace as they understand it. I know how that one goes. The obvious ones are the alcoholics and drug addicts among us, but there is a third group that has risen slowly, quietly, and without a lot of people noticing: the children. We are raising a generation of children who we regularly medicate with psychosomatic drugs because we believe this will give them peace – not as they understand it, but as we the adults do. These drugs are prescribed in the service of diagnosis that didn’t exist even 30 years ago… mostly ADD, ADDHD, and gender dysphoria. There is no judgment here, just observation.
I’m a product of the 60’s and things were different then, but they also weren’t. In those days, when a kid got out of line, a swat on the ass was the medicine of the day. Do that today and you can be up on charges for abuse. In those days, if children questioned their sexuality, we didn’t castrate them, we just let puberty take its course. Some of you may take great offense to me saying these things, and if so, I get it, and I respect you. But while the culture has changed in the pursuit of peace as we understand it in the past 30 years, human anatomy and human psychology hasn’t. Medicating a 10-year-old to learn how to be in the world is like politicians creating new laws to save us from ourselves when all they’re really doing is justifying their own existence and legacy. That’s an opinion from a blogger, not a doctor. Take it as such.
Right now is a strange moment in history. Here we are with our iPhones, Tesla’s, cloud accounts, double opt-in security, organic lettuce, and the rest of the adornments of a modern life, and yet, so many of us struggle to find what is perhaps life’s greatest prize: a sense of peace as we understand it. What gives?
Before we get to that, let me explain what I mean by this business of “as you understand it”. Peace is a sense you have inside. You can’t quantify it, and you can’t measure it with a multiple-choice test, you can only feel it. When you have it you know it, but it’s also different for everyone. The worst advice anyone can ever give anyone else who’s in a bad moment is, “you shouldn’t feel that way”. It never works. For me, the answer to this question of why can’t more of us find this seemingly small yet vital part of life has come from my friends in the club. For us the road to peace is found in what we call “getting outside of ourselves”. Let me explain what that means (as I understand it).
The first job each of us has every day is the original act of selfishness: our basic survival. If you don’t survive, nothing else really matters. The good news is if you’re reading this right now you’ve figured that one out. But after that, everything else in your life is just a matter of perspective, focus, and investments. The problem is that anyone (maybe even you) who struggles finding peace as they understand it, has never moved beyond their original perspective. For those who are self-focused, the world is intrinsic, not extrinsic and their existence is consumed by their thoughts, their feelings, their reactions, and nothing more. Good or bad, it’s all about them. It’s the only investment they know how to make.
Moving focus from inside to outside may seem very counter-intuitive, but without it, you will never find peace as you understand it. Why? Because you will be consumed by the thoughts and feelings that only live in a self-focused world…anger, bitterness, resentment, blame. Did someone hurt you? Maybe they did. But did you stop and ask what their intention was, if it was a miscommunication, or were you only focused on yourself and how hurt you were? Did something bad happen to you? Maybe it did. But did you see yourself as a victim or a volunteer? And what of that relationship that just ended. Were you constantly blaming your person for not being who you hoped they were, or did you ever consider that maybe they were just being the only person they know how to be?
The examples are countless, but the point remains the same: if all you focus on is yourself, you will always be consumed by the poison of your own selfishness, and you will never find a sense of peace as you understand it or not. If all of this sounds uncomfortable or even a little brutal, it kind of is. But if you find yourself in pursuit of your own version of peace as you understand it and not doing a very good job, here are 3 simple steps that can help.
1. Learn to pause. Most of our problems start not in our actions or even our reactions, but in our inability to just take a physical, mental, and emotional time out. Changing behavior and changing thinking isn’t easy, especially if you’re over 25, but it is possible. The first step is to just pause and gather yourself. This is especially important if overreacting is your brand.
2. Be honest. Take an inventory of your life and the situations you’ve been in before. If you can do this and do it honestly, you’ll quickly see most things, once you get beyond them, are never as bad as they seemed before they happened.
3. Be grateful. A common morning ritual for many is called, “doing your gratitude’s”. It’s taking a few moments to take inventory of the blessings in your life, even if all you can see is the scorched earth all around you. Gratitude will move you from a mindset of internal and empty, to external and abundant. Take that abundance into the world in all your affairs and magic will happen. But most of all you’ll just feel better, and that my Sunday friend, is a gift you deserve to give yourself every day. Peace be with you.
Good luck and have a good week.
Joe Still
2024.04.14
Cite
“To enjoy good health, and to bring true happiness to one’s family, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind.”
– Buddha